American nurse who saved Limerick toddler who fell 5 stories speaks out

Two-year old Neil Shanahan who survived a fall from the sixth floor of a Limerick hotel on July 2. Family's own

The miracle-working nurse who saved the life of two-year-old Neil Shanahan when he fell from the sixth floor of a Limerick hotel has spoken for the first time of her delight in the young boy’s speedy recovery.

Nurse Julie Genova, from Concord, near Boston, Massachusetts, was on a surprise vacation in Ireland with her husband while their three children were at summer camp when she happened upon the scene of the accident on July 2 just seconds after the toddler had fallen from the sixth floor terrace of the Strand Hotel in Limerick city.

Administering emergency CPR on Neil for five minutes, she helped bring him back to life before he was rushed by ambulance to University Hospital Limerick and later transferred to Temple Street Children’s Hospital in Dublin.

The miracle-boy has since been released from hospital and returned home with his family just five weeks after the fall that could have taken his life.

"It was a horrible situation. This little baby was lying there, not breathing,” Genova told the Irish Independent.

"I gave him CPR for about four to five minutes and he started to cough and come back to us. He was looking at his mum, he was moving his extremities and moving on his own.”

"He was just laying on his back on the terrace. He was not breathing and it was difficult to ascertain a pulse. Martina [Neil's mother] did not know what had happened to him; she found him like that. We did not know at the time that he had fallen from the top of the building."

Genova has since returned to Massachusetts where she works as a nurse in a private boys’ school but looks forward to returning to Ireland and to meeting with Neil and his family again under happier circumstances.

"I cannot wait to see them again and give that little one a really big hug," she said.

As for Neil, who now bears no signs at all that he suffered such a dramatic fall, he can look forward to an extra-special Christmas present as the Mayor of Limerick, Kieran O’Hanlon, has asked him to do the honor of turning on the city’s Christmas lights.

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